Previewing Today's 1.5 Million Payrolls Seasonal Adjustment

Today's consensus estimate for the non-farm payroll is for a 149K increase broken down as follows among some select banks:

Bank of America 115K

Deutsche Bank 120K

Goldman Sachs 125K

Citigroup 135K

JP Morgan 140K

Barclays 150K

UBS 165K

HSBC 167K

Why is the expectation so low? Why cold weather of course - the same cold weather that supposedly impacted December and January data. Then again, one wonders just what is the seasonal adjustment factor for if not to adjust for the, gasp, seasons.

So when one puts the February actual number in the context of its average adjustment over the past decade, what does one get? Simple - a boost of 1.5 million "jobs" which exsit nowhere in the real world but in some Arima-X-13 spreadsheet.

The chart below shows what the average seasonal factor by month has been in the past 10 years.

In other words, today's entire pick up in jobs is one tenth of the overall seasonal adjustment factor, which as we know by now is woefully broken since it is so incapable of grasping the simple concept of cold and snow in the winter.

And now you know why today's number is once again meaningless and only there to stimulate HFT algos into buying whether the news is good or bad.

I see that the monkeys are hammering away at the PM's early this morning. Are they front-running some bad numbers today in anticipation of a PM's spike after the bad news comes out, so they're hammering them down now before the open????

Looks like it dude by the 10 year is creeping back up of late also (2.8% now)....and with Oil over 100 and other food commodities up here too now...PLUS Yuan and Ruble weaker now too...something just dont jive here.